The doors of buildings, in particular also the doors of motor vehicles, are nowadays provided with safety locks, meaning the locks have so-called locking cylinders that allow activation of the locking bolts only with the aid of special keys. Until now, access to a room provided with a safety lock of this type in an emergency situation was possible only by destroying the lock, for example by forcefully pulling out the locking cylinder with a pull-out device, as disclosed in references DE-U-87 08 961.0 and DE-U-87 16 770. The amount of time required for this depends on the quality of the lock. However, the lock is destroyed in all cases, so that a new locking cylinder must be inserted. Owing to the fact that so-called locking systems are meanwhile used for locking all the locks in a home as well as a motor vehicle, meaning at least one key can activate all the locks, the remaining locking cylinders generally must also be replaced if one locking cylinder is destroyed.
So-called lock pickers are known for unlocking locks with locking cylinders provided with pin tumblers without destroying these locks. Pickers of this type have a steel blade provided with projections, which is inserted into the keyway. By simultaneously applying a torque with an additional lever tool in opening direction, an attempt is made to push the free ends of the individual pins with the aforementioned blade in the direction counter to the force of a resetting spring and into the closing plane. The respective pins are then held with the lever tool in this position until all pins have been moved to the opened position and the locking cylinder can be turned via the lever tool. This mode of operation is also very time consuming and in practical operations is successful only with locks that have been in use for a long time and have tumbler pins showing a corresponding amount of wear.
Furthermore known are so-called electro-pickers, for which a blade is inserted into the keyway and is moved with the aid of an electro-motor drive, such that it moves with high frequency back and forth inside the keyway plane. Thus, if a torque is applied simultaneously to the locking cylinder in opening direction, as is the case with a manually guided picker, the tumbler pins are moved to the opening plane defined by the periphery of the cylinder. However, this device is non-destructive only to a limited degree since the back and forth beating of the steel blade damages the keyway. The manually guided picker as well as the electro-picker are not suitable for use as so-called tubular or channel-type keyes for unlocking cylinders with wafer tumblers, which must be displaced individually to the opened position, counter to the force of the individual resetting springs and transverse to the cylinder axis.
Such an expenditure of time is not justifiable, for example, in emergency cases where a child or an animal is locked inside a motor vehicle parked in the bright sunlight. The same problem occurs in particular with modem motor vehicles provided with an automatic locking system, which is set to automatically lock, following a predetermined time interval, should the user forget to activate the locking system, even if the doors are only slightly closed. If the user has accidentally left the vehicle keys inside the vehicle, access can be gained only by force and by destroying the locking cylinder or through the time-consuming use of a picker.
Reference DE 198 22 079 C A discloses an unlocking device for locking cylinders, which comprises a tubular rotating body with axial slot that is arranged inside an immovable holding tube with axial key groove. The tumbler is a rod-shaped, loose locking body that is positioned inside the key groove and the slot. Circular supporting wafers are arranged side-by-side inside the rotating body. These wafers hold the rodshaped locking body with their edges inside the key groove of the immovable holding tube and the slot of the rotating body, such that these are positively locked together. The supporting wafers are each provided with a rectangular center opening that forms a keyway in the succession of supporting wafers. The supporting wafers furthermore are provided with edge recesses, positioned differently relative to the respective center openings. If the center openings are aligned in the same direction, the edge recesses are not arranged in a line, one behind the other, and the locking body is held in the locked position. The supporting wafers can be turned simultaneously relative to each other and differing only with the correct key, so that the edge recesses are lined up one behind the other and are positioned under the slot of the rotating body. The cross sectional profile of the locking body in that case is accommodated completely by the slot in the rotating body and the edge recesses of the supporting wafers and the interlocking between immovable holding tube and rotating body is released. Thus, the rotating body provided with a locking nose for the locking mechanism can be turned with the aid of the key.
Whereas with the use of the proper key for the known locking device, the edge recesses of the supporting wafers are aligned in a row during the insertion of the key already and because of correspondingly “encoded” projections, a longitudinally displaceable and rotating wire hook must be inserted into the keyway with the known unlocking device in a holding means. With the aid of this hook, each individual supporting wafer must then be turned by sensing it and its coordination with the locking rod must be felt. Markings on the device specify the thickness of the supporting wafers that form a “stack” to ensure that only one supporting wafer at a time is turned with the hook. One disadvantage is that the hook is not guided while inside the keyway and that a bending and/or twisting of the wire cannot be avoided given the small wire diameter. A built-in microphone in the hook entrance area is designed to support the sensing operation. Thus, even slight movements due to unavoidable production tolerances of the locking rod are detected if the edge recess is positioned under the slot in the rotating body.
A tool of this type cannot be used at all for unlocking a locking cylinder with locking bodies that must be displaced transverse to its rotational axis.